Please join us for What's New in Historical Fiction, a virtual panel series featuring historical novelists with new and upcoming titles. Hosted by the founder and editor of History Through Fiction, Colin Mustful, this special panel features:

Allison Epstein, author of Let the Dead Bury the Dead
Teresa H. Janssen, author of The Ways of Water
Lucy E.M. Black, author of The Brickworks
Joie Davidow, author of Anything But Yes

Allison Epstein earned her MFA in fiction from Northwestern University and a BA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. A Michigan native, she now lives in Chicago, where she works as an editor. Her new novel, Let the Dead Bury the Dead, is an immersive alternate history set in an imperial Russia on the brink of disaster, following a surprising cast of characters seeking a better future as Saint Petersburg struggles in the wake of Napoleon's failed invasion.

Teresa H. Janssen is a career educator, essayist, and author of short fiction whose writing has appeared in a variety of literary journals, including Zyzzyva, Catamaran, and Chautauqua. She attended Gonzaga and the University of Washington where she received an M.A. in Linguistics. Her debut novel, The Ways of Water, set in the early twentieth-century Southwest, where water means everything, is a poignant and heart-warming testament to the meaning of family and the strength of the human spirit.

Lucy E.M. Black is the author of the short story collection The Marzipan Fruit Basket, the historical fiction novel Eleanor Courtown, and most recently Stella's Carpet. Lucy is also a dynamic workshop presenter, experienced interviewer, and freelance writer. Her newest novel, The Brickworks, uses beautifully crafted prose to tell the story of Brodie Smith, a Scottish immigrant who establishes a brickworks in Buffalo, New York, in the aftermath of his father's death from the Tay Bridge Collapse of 1879.

Joie Davidow is the author of several books, including a memoir, Marked for Life; the nonfiction Infusions of Healing; a novel, An Unofficial Marriage: A Novel about Pauline Viardot and Ivan Turgenev; and, with Esmeralda Santiago, the editor of short-story anthologies Las Mamis and Las Christmas. Her new novel, Anything But Yes, was inspired by the diary of an 18th-century Roman Jewish girl who was imprisoned in a convent cell by the Catholic Church in an attempt to forcibly convert her.